These 2026 MonoVisions Awards Finalists Capture Natural Landscapes Beyond Color (50 Pics)

3rd Place Winner - Yoong Wah Alex Wong (Malaysia).

The journey across frozen Lake Baikal unfolds as both an expeditionary record and an environmental reflection. This body of work arises from an artistic inquiry into moments of encounter within a permafrost landscape of exceptional scale and vulnerability. The series captures the distinctive ice formations and material expressions of Lake Baikal during the most severe period of winter, revealing a terrain shaped by both geological time and climatic fragility.

Lake Baikal is the world’s oldest freshwater lake, formed approximately 25 million years ago, and its deepest, reaching nearly 5,300 feet. It is also among the most biologically diverse freshwater ecosystems on Earth. More than half of its approximately 2,500 animal species and almost 30 percent of its 1,000 plant species are endemic, underscoring its singular ecological significance. These qualities render the lake not only a natural wonder but a critical site for understanding environmental change.

Projections indicate that by the end of the twenty-first century, the Baikal region will experience a warmer and wetter climate, particularly during winter. Such changes are expected to alter key abiotic variables, including ice cover and transparency, water temperature, wind dynamics, vertical mixing, and nutrient availability, triggering cascading biotic responses throughout the ecosystem.

The frozen surface of the lake embodies this tension between permanence and impermanence. Some of the images resemble Jackson Pollock's abstract expressionist works, in which ice layers shift, fracture, and retreat. The ice layers on the surface appear solid yet remain fragile because of currents below. These intricate ice structures, both resilient and ephemeral, vanish as temperatures rise, bearing witness to a landscape in transition.

1st Place Winner - Eric Violette (France).

In the grain-growing flat plain of Beauce in France, ephemeral mountains appear in autumn, covered in artificial snow that is not immaculate like that of the high mountains, but earthy, like the soil of Beauce, constantly worked by men. They are not very high, but they stand out from the flatness of the agricultural plain and attract curious eyes. Moreover, as you approach, paths appear along their sides, weaving through the folds, crossing crevasses, climbing to the ridgeline, and finally descending back to the valley floor.

An invitation to an imaginary and improbable hike.

This series is a black and white exploration of Iceland as a land shaped by opposing forces: permanence and transformation, silence and movement, solidity and light. Removed from color, the landscape reveals its underlying structure lines carved by time, textures molded by wind, ice, fire, and gravity.

Across these images, the terrain becomes both subject and language. Mountains bear the scars of erosion like ancient memory etched into stone. Waterfalls fall endlessly, not as spectacle, but as quiet persistence. Ice spreads, fractures, and retreats, exposing the fragile balance between endurance and decay. The land does not pose; it exists.

The night introduces another dimension. The aurora appears not as color, but as motion veils of light sweeping across the sky, intangible yet commanding. In monochrome, the aurora transforms from a visual phenomenon into a gesture, a breath across the darkness. Human presence, when it appears, is minimal: a single house, a distant road, small markers of scale within something vastly older.

This series does not seek to document Iceland as a destination, but as a state of being. Each frame is an encounter with time: geological time measured in millennia, atmospheric time measured in seconds, and human time caught briefly between them. The repetition of forms ridges, flows, horizons create a visual rhythm that ties the images together into a continuous narrative.

Rather than dramatic moments, these photographs dwell in stillness. They invite contemplation, asking the viewer to slow down and read the land as one would read a silent text, where meaning is found not in what is said, but in what endures.

2nd Place Winner - Yevhen Samuchenko (Ukraine).

The author created this aerial series in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine's Ivano-Frankivsk region. In these parts of Ukraine, houses are sparsely placed on low mountains, sometimes close to the forest, allowing him to capture minimalist scenes of rural life. The snow-covered mountains resemble a blank sheet of paper, while the combination of rural life and nature creates simple yet striking scenes that resemble pencil drawings. This effect is especially noticeable from above, which is why the author chose to use a drone for the project. He spent many days hiking through the winter Carpathian Mountains, searching for interesting subjects for the series.

For the author, and for many others, the sound of falling water is one of nature’s most comforting and meditative sounds. Waterfalls are also among the most dazzling sights and are always worth the hike to experience and photograph.

They are filled with mysticism and folklore, while also offering opportunities for self-reflection and spiritual cleansing. Once the author feels satisfied with the photographs, he considers it important, out of respect for the surroundings, to sit and take in the sounds and sights. For him, this is a way to reconnect with the feeling that life can still be good and full of promise.

For this series, the author chose to add vignetting to draw the viewer’s eyes more intently toward the power and movement of the flowing water.

This series is a tribute to the giants of the world—the Himalayan mountains. The author took these photographs during a three-week trek through Nepal, during which he circled the Everest region on his own.

Powerful and awe-inspiring, the mountains offered him a series of magical moments that he captured with a 100mm–400mm lens. Each mountain has its own personality, and this is what the author sought to capture through his photography. Clouds, shadows, and even the moon played an important role in shaping the images.

As he observed and immersed himself in the dramatic landscape, the author felt that monochrome was the best way to express its intensity, strength, and emotion.

“Devoid” was born from the desire to see a familiar world differently. Iceland is often defined by its colors - the greens of moss, the rust of stone, and the blues of ice - but beneath that surface lies something more enduring. By removing color, the author sought to reveal the skeleton of the land, where light and shadow shape the landscape in their own way.

The mountains, valleys, and plains speak through shape and tone. Each photograph becomes a reflection on the relationship between what endures and what fades, with a focus on stillness and resilience.

In the absence of color, the author sees beauty as something quieter and more enduring. It is not lost, but distilled.

This series is not a travelogue or a celebration of scenic beauty, but a personal and meditative journey through the Irish landscape. The author sees the land not simply as a background, but as a presence. Each image was created slowly, often in solitude, over months of walking, waiting, and observing the changing light, stone, and silence.

The project began as a visual tribute to the southern coast of Ireland but gradually became something more personal: a monochromatic dialogue between the land and the self. The choice of black and white was deliberate, as the author felt that removing color allowed light, texture, and form to become more prominent.

Inspired by the tonal work of Ansel Adams and the emotional depth of Sebastião Salgado, the author aims to combine technical craftsmanship with the poetic qualities of photography. These eight photographs were selected from a larger body of work created for the author’s first solo exhibition, titled Éire i Dubh Agus Bán, meaning “Ireland in Black and White” in Irish Gaelic.

The landscapes depicted are wild but far from empty. Through textures, contrasts, and changing light, they become places of memory, presence, and reflection. Rather than simply documenting the land, the author sought to spend time within it—to observe, listen, and learn how to see it differently.

Inner Crossing reflects a solitary journey shaped by inward wandering.

For the author, wandering becomes a way of listening. Each step opens a quiet passage where the outer landscape and the inner world begin to overlap.

The series is not concerned with a destination, but with duration and feeling - a slow journey in which the landscape becomes a reflection of inner states.

Working intuitively, the author photographs only when a strong emotional connection emerges. Nature is approached not simply as scenery, but as a space where light, shadow, and form take on a subtle sense of personality.

Through these images, the author invites viewers to drift, lose their sense of orientation, and enter suspended moments of solitude and introspection.

The Tuscan landscape has its own unique charm. Despite the colorful nature of the Tuscan landscape, he opted for black and white photography, which has its own unmistakable specifics, where our sensory perception of the shapes of the landscape is not influenced by color.

The fusion of water and wind relentlessly erodes Navajo Territory. A landscape of hypnotic curves within the Indian reservation, an incredibly beautiful and winding gorge. This sandstone rock has been sculpted over millions of years.
According to Navajo ideals, Antelope Canyon was not formed by erosion but by the Holy People. They believe that the spiritual world and our own intersect in Antelope Canyon. Thus, the canyon embodies the harmony and connection between spirit and nature.

In the Arctic in autumn, the sun hangs low over the landscape. Shades of luminous light fall on snow capped glaciers thin clouds. The ground is abundant with moss, lichen and small shrubs. Open, rolling landscapes are awash with icy water cascading from towering peaks. As the days begin to shorten, reindeer move across the land and birds gather and depart. The wind picks up and stars appear with shining clairty. If you're lucky the aurora will flicker green, pink and white above darkened mountains. It's a landscape predominantly coloured with shades of copper, charcoal, red and sage. And in its presence, the crisp, cold beauty of the arctic is profound.

Our National Parks offer a quiet place to ponder ancient stone formations rising upward toward the heavens, reminding us of the vastness of time and nature’s enduring beauty.

Photos taken on Madeira Island, mainly in Baia D´Abra, located in a protected area called Ponta São Lourenço, showcasing the beauty of the Madeira Island sea.

The sea repeats itself endlessly, yet no moment is the same. In these images, time is stretched until movement becomes texture and rhythm. The shoreline becomes a quiet boundary where water and land negotiate space again and again. By reducing the scene to light, form, and flow, the work invites a slower way of seeing - not to capture the sea, but to listen to its breathing.

This series is inspired by the author’s deep passion for mountains, their simplicity, and the silence that winter brings to these landscapes. When he encounters a special moment in nature, his aim is to capture its essence and remind others of the importance of being present—to pause and fully appreciate the experience of being immersed in the natural world.

The author believes that people can become disconnected from themselves while absorbed in the pace of modern life. It is easy to forget what exists beyond homes, jobs, and cities. Yet nature remains there, offering a sense of peace, wisdom, and wonder.

For the author, if his work can inspire viewers to reconnect with even a small part of the wildness within themselves, then he considers that a meaningful achievement as a landscape photographer.

An ongoing theme in the author’s work is early light falling on and filtering through trees, and this selection brings together photographs from several separate shoots exploring this idea. A couple of the images were taken in fields and open countryside just ten minutes from his home. When the conditions are right, he will often leave breakfast behind and head out with his photography equipment to capture the early light.

In early spring, the Bigorre (Hautes-Pyrénées, France) reveals a landscape shaped by contrast and light. After days of rain, sunlight finally breaks through, awakening the plains to the north, while the Pyrenean peaks remain suspended in winter for a little while longer.

This unique territory, where softness meets ruggedness, offers a visual dialogue between opposing forces: shadow and light, valley and summit, renewal and lingering cold.

To express these contrasts, I chose a black-and-white approach inspired by Ansel Adams, whose work elevated landscape photography into a powerful artistic language.

Light plays a central role throughout the series. As it moves through the valleys, it shapes the scene, revealing fleeting atmospheres and emphasizing the raw beauty of a land in transition.